UNIVERSITY PARK — George W. Bush walked into the exhibit space at his presidential center this week and encountered a somewhat surreal sight: a portrait of him painted by him.

The former president knew the work well, of course. But here he was seeing the painting, along with two dozen other portraits he did of world leaders, for the first time in a gallery.

And for a man who jokes that nobody — including him — expected him to be an artist, the setting was surprising.

“I’ve always been a slightly confident person,” Bush said, as he led a Dallas Morning News reporter and photographer on a tour of the paintings. “On the other hand, I never thought I would be this confident, to put paintings out for people to see.”

The George W. Bush Presidential Center’s highly anticipated exhibit, “The Art of Leadership: A President’s Personal Diplomacy,” opens Saturday and runs through June 3. It explores his administration’s foreign policy through the lens of the 43rd president’s newfound passion for painting.

Bush, who has said he takes “great delight in busting stereotypes,” knows that his hobby is a source of fascination. He wants to leverage that interest to make a larger point about the importance of foreign affairs.

“There’s a little bit of tendency in our country at this point to say, ‘Well, it doesn’t really matter,’” he said. “Hopefully, this exhibit will say, ‘It does matter.’”

The portraits include friends and rivals, from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Bush said he hopes the show “diffuses any sense of isolationism” and highlights the need to “get to know these people.

“We need to stay engaged with them on a variety of fronts.”

Bush’s foray into painting began in 2012.

He started playing around with the iPad app Penultimate, drawing stick-figure doodles to email to his wife and daughters. Around that time, he met with historian John Lewis Gaddis, who suggested that Bush read Winston Churchill’s Painting as a Pastime.

Bush now joins his wife on visits to art galleries, recently taking in a show at the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University. He reads art books and paints almost daily. He took an online art history course through the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

“Like George does with everything he takes up, he became very, very devoted,” Laura Bush said.

He’s fascinated now by brush strokes, proportion and color palettes. He joked that when he plays golf these days, all he does is “talk about the different shades of green.”

When he spoke about his portrait of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Liberian president, he said he loved her violet hat. He toned down the color of her dress, he said, to “give it a sense of texture.”

He added: “I know that sounds strange, coming from me.”

Margaret Spellings, a Bush adviser for 20 years, chuckled.

“I can’t believe you talk like this,” said Spellings, now the Bush Center’s president. “What have you done with George Bush?”

But the former president — in truth — is right there in his paintings.

Bush is loath to engage in “psychobabble,” as he calls it. But he acknowledged that as he painted each leader, “there’s some kind of emotion that ended up on the canvas.”

The friendships. The challenges. The lessons learned. The pivotal moments in history.

“What people will be looking for is not so much the techniques I used, but how I felt about a person,” he said, adding that the leaders he painted have not seen the works.

The seed for the exhibit was planted last spring, when Norfleet’s mentor, former SMU art professor Roger Winter, who now lives in New York, was coming through Dallas. They arranged a meeting at Bush’s studio in his Preston Hollow home.

In advance of the visit, Bush asked Winter if he should work on anything in particular. Winter had been impressed by the “personable way” that Bush depicted faces and expressions in his paintings of pets. The instructor thought Bush’s experience would allow him to apply the same touch to portraits of world leaders. And when Winter came by a couple of weeks later, Bush had started about 20 paintings of his former peers on the world stage.

“I never imagined he would take my suggestion and run with it,” said Winter, who described Bush’s style as “painterly” and “expressionistic.”

The new exhibit also features photographs of presidential meetings, many at the Bushes’ ranch in Crawford. Also on display are diplomatic gifts that Bush received as president, objects that are now part of the George W. Bush Presidential Library’s archive.

The Blair display, for instance, includes a personalized copy of Never Give In, a collection of speeches by Churchill.

But the paintings provide a personal insight that such artifacts cannot.

As Bush walked through the exhibit, he stopped at each portrait to share not just an art critique, but a reflection.

He painted his dad, George H.W. Bush, in a “loving way,” as a “gesture of compassion.” He depicted Blair as a “good pal” with a “determined face.” He focused on the Dalai Lama’s lips to show his “gentle, sweet countenance.”

He aimed for a “sympathetic portrait” of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to highlight her sense of humor. He put a smile on former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to show that he’s “just a fun guy.”

“Eyes are very important,” Bush said. “You can convey a feeling about somebody.”

His portrait of Putin, he said, will “probably be the painting that will get a lot of attention.” He added that it’s among his favorites.

“His cold, blue eyes resonate — when you meet him, and in that painting,” Bush said. “He’s a zero-sum thinker.”

In keeping with his practice of not commenting on current events, especially those that involve his successor, President Barack Obama, Bush steered clear of discussion about the current Russian aggression in Ukraine.

But asked about his 2001 statement that he’d been able to get a sense of Putin’s soul, Bush said that observation was a first impression of a different man, someone “feeling his way as a leader.”

The portrait reflects a “later Putin,” he said, a man determined “to reconstitute the former Soviet Union as best he can.”

Toward the end of Bush’s presidency, he said, “we still had a decent relationship, but it became more complicated over time.”

He paused.

“Anyway, I’m pleased with that painting,” he said, moving on to the next portrait.

Follow Tom Benning on Twitter at @tombenning.

KNOW BEFORE YOU GO

“The Art of Leadership: A President’s Personal Diplomacy” features more than two dozen never-before-exhibited portraits of world leaders painted by George W. Bush. Through the paintings, the former president hopes to provide a personal perspective on his relationships with the leaders.

The exhibit opens Saturday and runs through June 3 at the George W. Bush Presidential Museum at Southern Methodist University. Admission is included in the price of a museum ticket.

The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday.